Getting More From Coupa Approvals

Coupa Approvals is one of the most powerful capabilities in the Coupa application. They are designed to make your spend initiative successful by striking the right balance between control and efficiency. Coupa generates approvals using a user's management hierarchy and dedicated approval chains. Configure them from Setup > Company Setup > Approvals.

In this product spotlight we’d like to share some tips and best practices that can make your approval processes more efficient increase is usage across transactions and users.

Too many approvers is one of the biggest issues that inhibit employees from getting the goods and services that they need to be successful at work. Contrary to popular belief, having more approvers does not mean more effective spend control or more compliant processes. Fewer approvers actually mean more accountability and faster cycle times. Check out this Coupa Benchmark data and see how companies of various sizes manage their number of approvers per requisition.

Did you know that you can specify different Ultimate Approvers for requisitions, invoices, and expenses to handle exceptions. Leverage this setting to respond to errors and issues faster by assigning approvers that are more familiar with the business policies associated with each area. Configure this under Setup > Company Setup > Approvals.

Encourage your approvers to use the Coupa mobile app or mobile email to keep your approval chains moving even when employees are away from their desks. On an average 70% of approvals in Coupa happen via email or mobile. So your approvers could easily perform actions from email and if they want a deeper look they can easily download the Coupa App. *Pro Tip: You can provide download links to the mobile apps and email approval tips right on your customization Coupa Homepage content.

Each transaction type that supports approvals has a default view called Pending Approval for you to get a quick view of that list. Use this to see how many transactions are in flight at any given time.

Pro-tip: You can dig even deeper by going to the /approvals page that you can visit to get all the information about approvals across transactions.
(EG: http://{your_instance}.coupahost.com/approvals).

Like what you see? Want to know what others think?

Join this interesting Approval Chain Override related discussion in the Coupa Community and share your thoughts or use cases you might have seen.